Elvis Presley - Proud Mary - 20 August 1974, Midnight Show (Final Time Performed Live)

Of the fifteen Las Vegas opening nights that Elvis performed in six a half years it appears that the only one not have been recorded in any way is perhaps the most significant show - Sunday , 31 July 1969. This was of course his return to live performing after release from the movie contracts. Despite professional recordings of shows later in the season specifically for a live 'In person' album it is still surprising that the earliest soundboard recording is four days into the engagement on 3 August. Even if RCA had no intention of using any material from this opening night one would have thought that at least it would have been recorded from the mixing board for posterity given the magnitude of this particular show. With that in mind it is also surprising that any type of audience recording has not surfaced which would at least give some audio documentation of this historic event. This would leave any evidence of the opening night's setlist purely down to some educated guesswork with any sort of record only possible by piecing together bits and pieces from reports of the evening. In saying that though, as Elvis' setlist remained pretty rigid throughout that engagement, it is pretty safe to assume what the setlist might have been. The first Las Vegas opening night to be recorded was that of his next engagement on Monday 26 January 1970. The previous August Elvis' setlist had it's emphasis mostly on rock 'n' roll with the odd cover (Yesterday, Words) and recent hits (In The Ghetto, Suspicious Minds) thrown in for good measure. The January/February setlist would be somewhat different with a radical shake up in order to prevent the show from becoming stale. Many of the rock 'n' roll numbers would be retained into this new season as would the recent hits but there would also be an introduction of many new songs and two new singles into the setlist for this engagement. On this opening night alone Elvis would introduce TEN new songs, two of which were new singles an another two 50's hits not used in the previous engagement. Later in the season more new songs would appear including 'Release Me', 'The Wonder of You' and 'See See Rider'. There was also a couple of personnel changes in the band and backing groups. Glen D. Hardin finally arrived replacing Larry Muhoberac on piano, Ronnie Tutt, having had a previous commitment was missing and his place was taken by Bob Lanning. and Cissy Houston had left The Sweet Inspirations leaving them without a soprano for this engagement. The very first new song to be introduced that evening was 'Proud Mary' a hit for Creedance Clearwater Revival a year earlier and a version from later in the season would be first heard on the 'On Stage' album. The opening night version is different even to the 'On Stage' version recorded three weeks later but the song would be dropped for the next two seasons before reinstatemant in August 1971 with a new faster arrangement and the omitted verse included akin to On Tour and MSG. After performing the song at the Vegas Dinner show of 25 August 1972, Elvis would not perform 'Proud Mary' again until it was reinstated again amid a radical setlist shake up. This one in particular is probably the most radical and well known from 19 August 1974 where amongst other things 2001 and See See Rider were dropped with Elvis beginning the show with "Big Boss Man". For whatever reason, and they have been debated within the Elvis fandom for years, Elvis was not satisfied with the new setlist and so reverted to type the very next show. One of the songs temporarily retained was "Proud Mary" but was sung just once more before it too became a casualty by the third show of the engagement at the Midnight Show on 20 August. Whilst soundboard audio of the opening night has been available, initially unofficially, the second and third shows could only be heard on very poor sounding amateur CD-r's of the shows. However in FTD's latest release, "Vegas 74" both shows from the 20 August 1974 have been made officially available almost in their entirety including this final rendition of "Proud Mary".